How to Install LibreOffice on Ubuntu/Debian/Mint

LibreOffice is a free and opensource office suite that gives user the ability to create Documents, Presentations, Spreadsheets, work with databases among many other functions. It's a productivity suite comprising

• Writer - Word processor
• Impress - Presentation software
• Calc - Spreadsheet software
• Base - For database Management
• Draw - Vector graphics editor
• Math - For equations

In this article, we'll take you through how you can install LibreOffice 6.0 on Ubuntu 18.04, Debian 9 and Mint 18.3.

LibreOffice 6.0 was released on the seventh anniversary of its first stable release which was released on January 25, 2011. It comes with numerous improvements to enhance usability as well as look and feel. These improvements include;

• Advanced interoperability with Microsoft Office documents
• An export to ePub format
• A Notebookbar which is more advanced (i.e. Ribbon interface)
• A Form menu in Writer that can design forms, and create standards-compliant PDF forms
• Lists for recent special characters
• It makes it simple to save embed images
• Has elementary icons and Noto fonts that are added by default
• openPGP keys for signing ODF documents
• Improvement on Document Classification.
• Advanced support for AbiWord, QuarkExpress and PageMaker files
• The inclusion of 10 more new templates in Impress
• Half a million rows can now be dealt with using calc
• New online help
• Improved spellcheck with a customary dictionary

Install LibreOffice 6.0 on Ubuntu 18.04 , Mint 18.3 & Debian 9

Before anything else, you must first uninstall any pre-existing LibreOffice suite software. Login as root and run,

apt purge LibreOffice-core && apt-get autoremove

Next, download the LibreOffice Debian package from LibreOffice repository.

For a 64 bit system

wget https://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/stable/6.0.4/deb/x86_64/LibreOffice_6.0.4_Linux_x86-64_deb.tar.gz

Sample Output

Resolving ftp.wayne.edu (ftp.wayne.edu)... 141.217.0.199
Connecting to ftp.wayne.edu (ftp.wayne.edu)|141.217.0.199|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 214121980 (204M) [application/x-gzip]
Saving to: ‘LibreOffice_6.0.4_Linux_x86-64_deb.tar.gz’

LibreOffice_6.0.4_Linux_x 100%[=====================================>] 204.20M  2.43MB/s    in 37s

2018-05-24 10:38:27 (5.47 MB/s) - ‘LibreOffice_6.0.4_Linux_x86-64_deb.tar.gz’ saved [214121980/214121980]

To verify successful download of LibreOffice package run the ls command

ls

For a 32 bit system

https://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/stable/6.0.4/deb/x86/LibreOffice_6.0.4_Linux_x86_deb.tar.gz

Next, uncompress the downloaded LibreOffice tarball

tar -xvf LibreOffice_6.0.4_Linux_x86-64deb.tar.gz

Upon successful extraction, Navigate to the uncompressed folder. You'll notice a 'DEBS' directory

cd LibreOffice_6.0.4.2_Linux_x86-64_deb

When you cd into DEBS directory, you'll find all the Debian packages that came with LibreOffice 6.0

To install the LibreOffice 6.0 run.

dpkg -i *.deb

Notice the use of the wildcard to include installation of all the Debian packages therein.

Sample Output

Setting up libobasis6.0-onlineupdate (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libobasis6.0-ooofonts (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libobasis6.0-ooolinguistic (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libobasis6.0-python-script-provider (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libobasis6.0-pyuno (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libobasis6.0-writer (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libobasis6.0-xsltfilter (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libreoffice6.0 (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libreoffice6.0-dict-en (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libreoffice6.0-dict-es (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libreoffice6.0-dict-fr (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libreoffice6.0-draw (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libreoffice6.0-en-us (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libreoffice6.0-impress (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libreoffice6.0-math (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libreoffice6.0-writer (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libobasis6.0-base (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libobasis6.0-calc (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libobasis6.0-librelogo (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libobasis6.0-postgresql-sdbc (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libreoffice6.0-base (6.0.4.2-2) ...
Setting up libreoffice6.0-calc (6.0.4.2-2) ..

To launch LibreOffice 6.0

libreoffice6.0

LibreOffice 6.0 will start launching

After a few seconds, LibreOffice Windows appears giving you several options on the software to run

How to update LibreOffice

Should you need to update your LibreOffice suite, you can easily do so by navigating to the 'Help' button and click on 'check for updates' as shown below.

Since my LibreOffice suite is the latest and up to date, no updates are available and therefore, no action is required. However, if updates were available, the  'Download' and 'Install' buttons would be active allowing you to download and install the updates.

How to uninstall LibreOffice 6.0

If you need to uninstall LibreOffice 6.0 at any time, run the commands below

 apt-get remove --purge libreoffice

To free up disk space after uninstalling run

apt-get clean

Lastly, to remove the dependencies that came with LibreOffice and are not used by any other package in the system run

apt autoremove

Read also :

• 6 Feature-rich OpenSource CAD Tools for Linux

In this article, we have shown you how to install LibreOffice 6.0 on Ubuntu 18.04, and latest versions of Debian and Mint. The latest version of LibreOffice has many improved features which are compatible with Microsoft Office allowing you work across both platforms. Note that If LibreOffice 6.0 is to be installed, the existing version of LibreOffice should be removed first. That said, feel free to follow the installation guide and get yourself the latest LibreOffice suite!